The Real Reason
by Celestial Chaos
Summary: Set between the season six episodes ChrisCrossed and The Legend of Sleepy Halliwell. One night, Chris reflects on why he's come back from the future. There's more to it than he's letting on.


Author's Notes: I watched a few episodes of Charmed tonight instead of, um...doing my homework. Interaction Analysis can only be so exciting every now and then when there's more interesting things on the television. I don't know why I wrote this in particular--I know part of it was because of some stuff I read last night. Anyways, I hope you like this fic. It's just Chris doing some reflection between the time of Chris Crossed and The Legend of Sleepy Halliwell from season 6. I don't own any of these people by the way! Although I wish I did.

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"Good _night_, Chris. No more demon hunting tonight. Go to sleep. It's been a long day." 

"Yeah, yeah. Night."

Chris watched Piper step past the threshold of the attic door and disappear down the well-lit staircase. Once the sound of her footsteps faded and he heard a door close, he used his telekinesis to shut closed the entrance of the attic. Part of him was tempted to turn the lock just to be on the safe side. That was when he realized that he really had been far too paranoid lately, too neurotic. He wasn't doing anything wrong, and locking himself in the attic was no way to keep the sisters or Leo from being even more suspicious of him. It was hard enough when not too long ago (or what felt like not too long ago), there had been the fiasco with Bianca coming back into the past and trying to steal his powers. They were all still dealing with the trouble that that situation had caused.

A familiar jolt of pain and loss coursed through him when he thought of her. In the future, Bianca had been the only thing that Chris was able to call his family. He had no mother, had no father, no aunts...he only had his estranged brother, who was evil, and Bianca, who was, in essence, the most important person in Chris' life. She was the only stable figure he could count on. She was the one he loved.

And in the future, Wyatt had ruthlessly killed her.

That didn't mean anything for the Bianca now, in this time; Chris knew that. But still, he wasn't in love with the Bianca _now_. He was in love with the Bianca that he had met haphazardly one day while shopping for potion ingredients...the one who knew how much he hated the color pink; who knew that he really liked sleeping in on Sundays if at all possible; and who knew just the right way to make him feel comfortable at night. He was in love with the Bianca that had meant the world to him, and who, if he didn't fix the future, was going to suffer the same exact fate that she had that night.

Despite the stinging pain welling up behind his eyes, Chris refused to cry. He refused to shed tears over something that he had the power to change. He fully believed that he would be able to find the reason why Wyatt became evil and that he would be able to eradicate it. And maybe...maybe in the process, he would be able to save more than that.

There were a lot of things that Chris kept secret from Leo and the sisters, knowing all too well that if he told them it all, it would change everything. If Leo knew that he was never around in the future, if Phoebe and Paige knew they had been killed by demons, or _worse_, if Piper—if his _mother—_knew what happened to _her_…

Chris shook his head at the thought, looking down at the _Book of Shadows_. It was hard to keep all of these things a secret from them, especially now that they knew he was half whitelighter, half witch, just like Paige. That had been a fuck-up that not even he could have expected; it set him back in his plans a little, too, because he had needed to cover his tracks twice as hard, just to keep the sisters and Leo from figuring out the truth. It took away from his time in finding out who was going to turn Wyatt evil.

Sometimes, just randomly_—_or maybe even not so randomly_—_he wondered if Piper didn't know, didn't have some kind of _inkling _that they were related...that he was her son. He caught the strange looks she would give him from time to time, the lingering ones that lit up with that doubt that Chris recognized far too well. It was the kind of doubt that she used to give him in his future when he was thirteen and would lie to her about being at the library when he had really been hanging out with friends, or lie about having done his homework when it was still sitting on his desk. He knew that look, knew how it meant that the gears were grinding.

But above all, what was most difficult was dealing with the fact that he was literally reliving the past, only before he had actually been born. He felt like a stranger in his own house, his _home_, and he felt hostility from his own family, the very people he had come back to help. Maybe if Piper had known that he was her son, he thought, she wouldn't have thrown him against the wall when she had been blessed with the Earth Goddess' powers. Maybe she would have actually listened to him when he told her about the demon that was making pocket realities. Maybe she would have hugged him, kissed him, comforted him when Bianca had been mercilessly murdered.

He glanced at the nearby calendar, noting that it was September, and that there were a few warm tears dripping down his cheeks.

He closed his eyes.

Chris hadn't come back from the future to save just Wyatt. He had come back to save his _family_.


End file.
